


Ghosts of Elsinore

by fresne



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Abortion, Attempted Abortion, Crueltide, F/M, Female Protagonist, Ghosts, IE Hamlet with Porn, Misses Clause Challenge, Murder, Oral Sex, POV Female Character, Suicide, Vaginal Sex, Yuletide 2014, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 04:57:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2838860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ophelia had always been a fool for love and charity. For sighing over the tragic hero, Sigismund, or Lancelot, for all Father would chide her sighs and her brother, Laertes, would make fun of her.</p><p>That her foolishness might lead to her ruin was what every lady was told. Yet how could it be so? When she loved her sweet prince loved her and Hamlet certainly made her believe he loved too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts of Elsinore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lizimajig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizimajig/gifts).



> The following may be considered as inspiration for my work and inspiration for my dialogue, possibly even quotes because apt quotes are cool:
> 
> Such a brilliant idea from the request  
> from this analysis that Ophelia (as you might guess from the title) is pregnant throughout the play and increasingly desperate to hide her ruin.  
> http://thehamletweblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/by-way-ophelia-is-pregnant.html  
> http://www.craftyscreenwriting.com/ophelia.html  
> I used this for help on some Hamlet timelines.  
> http://www.project-hamlet.info/timeline-2.html

Ophelia had always been a fool for love and charity. For sighing over the tragic hero, Sigismund, or Lancelot, for all Father would chide her sighs and her brother, Laertes, would make fun of her. For caring for the broken winged chick of the white swans that swam in the moat around the castle. Laertes jeered that the chick would die and Father said, "It is the lot of man and bird to pass from this mortal coil." But her sweet prince, Hamlet, always understood and helped her bind its wing, or gave a gold coin to the beggar where she'd given a copper of her pin money. 

Sometimes, it turned out the beggar had lied about his twelve children and her Father chided her for wasted funds and that charity should begin at home, and as Christ himself had said the poor shall be with us forever. Prince Hamlet never reproached her. He'd say, "No one is perfect, but your heart approaches it." She kissed her sweet prince's cheek.

Ophelia's first memories were of the nursery that she and Laertes shared with Prince Hamlet. 

Her very first memory was that of a ghostly child in blue blinking at her from across the room. When she told the nursemaid of it, that good woman sighed, but would not tell her what it meant to see the Blue Boy. She brushed back Ophelia's hair. "My lamb, you only see the ghosts that you're meant to see. There's no harm in the Blue Boy. He only means to take a peek at the ones he may be playing with."

Ophelia wished at times that her Mother would haunt her, but she never did, but that lady was in heaven.

Her Father recounted many times his limitless gratitude to Queen Gertrude for taking his poor half orphaned children in hand after the fever had taken his dear wife in her childbed, and with her their third child; with his own duties weighing him down in that he needed to be seeing that each ship that passed through the Oresund straights, on which Elsinore Castle was situated, paid their required fees, and to the working of the castle and the kingdom; all of which, of course, of course taking precedence over his own needs and even with his doubled griefs and…

Queen Gertrude would smile wistfully and say, "I only wish that I could have saved her. Lady Mary was a great comfort when I came to this Northern court so young to wed and then so quickly became a new mother. She and… one other were the only ones who would speak to me in my native English when I had but a few words of Danish to my tongue." She smiled her doting smile to where Prince Hamlet was frowning at some book or other. "I know they are a comfort to my son with the King, his Father, away at war."

There were always wars and the King was always away fighting them. The castle was under siege three times before Ophelia was nine for control of the straits. It was why none of the castle's windows faced outward to the straits that Denmark controlled to its great enrichment. 

Every ship that desired to slip between the Atlantic and the Baltic must pay their fee to Denmark. Her Father spoke of this relentlessly, and of his duties, and of their lessons, and not to be too familiar with the Prince, whose station was so high above their own, and he a mere Lord Chamberlain and the Lord was but a curtesy, and to recall that inch by inch everything was a cinch and to apply this maxim to their studies. Sometimes Laertes parroted Father behind his back. Sometimes it was Ophelia. Depending on where Father's back was pointing. Always with affection, she knew it meant that Father cared.

There were few visits from King Hamlet, which Ophelia supposed was why Prince Hamlet so prized them. To Prince Hamlet, his Father was Holger the Dane and King Arthur and Charlemagne and Jupiter combined in one tall booming body with the same fire red hair as the prince. For days before the visit, Prince Hamlet would glow as brightly as his hair. "Ophelia, first I'll tell him of what I've read of Socrates and Martin Luther." He'd practice his wit upon Ophelia. 

She always proved poor preparation. 

Prince Hamlet's would strive the entire time to lay out half manic witticisms before the King, his Father, like a cat presented mice to its owner. 

Laertes sometimes muttered that the King was about as pleased to receive the gifts of wit rather than silent skill at arms.

Ophelia would slap Laertes on the arm. "Laertes!" She had an entire octave of ways to say her brother's name depending on how he was behaving. He didn't seem to notice how easily Prince Hamlet took words as cuts. 

Often after a visit, she and Prince Hamlet would end up sitting in the window seat overlooking the fountain courtyard with its trees from the orangery. Prince Hamlet's curled up with his head in her lap, and Ophelia singing his favourite songs. Doing her best to draw his mind away from all the things he thought he should have said and done to win the King, his Father's, approval.

Queen Gertrude would kiss her cheek on her morning or evening visit, and whisper to Ophelia that there was nothing wrong with having so soft a heart. It was because boys were so heart foolish that girls had to be so wise. 

Between these rare and frequent visits, they were at their lessons, which Hamlet excelled at while Laertes used his books for practicing targets. 

Ophelia was better than both of them at maths. Laertes would roll his eyes and say, "What will you need sums for? You are a girl."

"I shall see to the keeping our estate while my husband is at," she waved her hand with a vague idea of wars and sailing, or perhaps farming. Elsewhere, her husband would be elsewhere.

"With what dowry will you get a husband?" Laertes snatched up her paper and waved it over her head with the advantage of three additional year's height. "I'll be stuck with your care until you're withered and old." This was foolish of him, because she had no reason to reach for the paper when he was as ticklish as old Adam and it took but a dance of her fingers to get him curled up laughing like a bug. Soft hearted did not mean she was necessarily weak.

Once, Hamlet said softly, almost quieter than she could hear, "I'll see to your care. When we're older. Ophelia, you've nothing to be worried about. You won't even need sums. Father doesn't let Mother worry about such things and I'll see you don't have to either."

She rested her head on his shoulder, which was the perfect height for it. "Sweet prince, maybe I want those worries." She kissed his cheek for the thought and went back to her lessons.

Of course, they weren't always at lessons. The children laughed as they went down into the tunnels where the soldiers were stationed at their cannons and pretended that some evil threatened Denmark and Holger the Dane had wakened from his long sleep to kill everyone and so save the nation. Prince Hamlet was always Holger the Dane. He'd hold up the old sword from the armoury and wildly decree, "Everyone dies, but two!"

The ghost of the soldier who'd died in the tunnels some hundred years before often moaned in accompaniment, but he appeared to any who spent any time below the earth and they ignored him.

Laertes was most often the threatening hordes. Ophelia played the part of the dying masses. She would clutch her chest and stagger in the dank tunnel or by the splashing fountain of rich marble in the King and Queen's garden courtyard when the weather was fair. 

Unlike Laertes, she always got to live again. They needed her if they wanted to repeople Denmark with her and Prince Hamlet's children. 

Though their Father would chide them for long hours if he heard them at the game. Fortunately, this only happened when Prince Claudius, Prince Hamlet's uncle, came to call on Queen Gertrude. Father spent most of his time with Prince Claudius, who lived in the castle and saw to the running of the country during times of war, which was most always.

Sometimes Prince Hamlet would stand on the wide parapet overlooking the straits and say, "There is a naval ship in the harbour. It flies the royal colours. Maybe it is the King, my Father."

They would go down into the harbour to see. There was always something to see and do and they learned the narrow streets of the town of Elsinore much as they learned the crannies of the castle. 

Queen Gertrude restrained their Father from stopping them when he looked up from his duties to chide them on decorum. She'd say, "They will have to grow up too soon as it is. Let them have their fun," or else when the weather was poor, she'd call them to her parlour with its wide glass overlooking the fountain courtyard. She'd sit Hamlet on her right and Ophelia on her left. Ophelia would hold the Queen's embroidery floss while one of the ladies read to them from the newest Romance from the Italies or France. Laertes could not bear to sit still long enough to join them.

When there was no war, there were rich parties every night with many plays staged at the end of the long feast hall.

King Hamlet delighted in holding celebrations to please his Queen Gertrude, who was so many years his junior. He'd pat her hand with battle marked fingers. "You are as lovely as the day we wed with your beautiful face so pale and grave and you so shy of speaking." He smacked her cheek with a hearty kiss. "We've done well my love, we have."

"Yes, we have done well, My King." She kissed his cheek in return and squeezed his battle scarred hand. 

Prince Claudius sitting next them always looked away at the play when the King was in court. He'd urge his younger brother, younger than he by some twelve years, to drink deeply and make merry. Though the King always out drank and out ate any courtier at the groaning table of his court. Ophelia always felt sorry for Prince Claudius, who only had warmth in his eyes for the Queen, his King and brother's wife.

Sometimes, the children would hide themselves behind the rich hangings and watch the plays, which featured players from England and France.

During these feasts, the gentlemen used the spiral staircase off the end of the hall to relieve themselves into the straw laid out for that purpose. Sometimes vomiting from drink or vomiting so they could consume more. Sometimes onto a gentleman at the curved railing below. That was the best for then there would be a duel in the courtyard with much lurching on the ice and loud voiced declarations.

While the ladies lurched into the alcoves behind the tapestries to relieve themselves or tickle their throats with feathers so they could eat and drink more of the great feast that was laid out every night, or else more furtive sports with wide skirts raised to allow unfastened codpieces entry. 

This was wickedness, Ophelia knew. It was wicked and the price of being found out or worse being caught with a babe was the loss of all. All virtue. All reputation. Forever stained. To be thrown into the streets, or else be mewed up in a nunnery if she'd family to pay for it, unless she was fortunate and the gentleman married her.

Every year, some lady would disappear to never appear again amid droll looks and whispers would follow that she should have been more careful with her vinegar bath or else better in counting her days to only couple on the ones that were safe. They speculated if the Ghost of the Fallen Lady had appeared to the newly stained lady after the baby had caught in her sinful belly moaning that "That all was lost," or "Ruin was at hand," or some such. No one would admit to having heard that ghost, but she was said to appear to prompt the unchaste into trying to find the right dose of rue to rid herself of her secret shame.

Often enough, a Lady misjudged and screamed her last hours in her blood stained bed. Ophelia thought that much better than that fate was the maid, the one with the butter yellow hair, who'd drowned herself in the moat. She'd no Christian burial, but she'd looked so peaceful, even if her ghost did come dripping some nine days later to accuse the Count of Holgsborg of taking her by force to cause her shameful condition. Accuse him and follow him all about the castle until he fled.

At castle Elsinore, everyone said that a person saw the ghosts that they were meant to see.

That occasion had thrilled the court for three months of gossip until fresher meat was obtained.

It hurt Ophelia to see the clouds gather on Prince Hamlet's face hearing whispers about his own mother and father. 

Not that there was any stain to the reputation of the Queen. Rather the opposite given the empty nursery with its dozen beds for three children, who were fast getting ready to leave it.

When Ophelia heard these whispers, she'd distract Prince Hamlet with a story and would pretend that things would always remain the same.

~~~~~~~~~~~

But like the doom Queen Gertrude had often spoken of, childhood came to its end.

Laertes and Prince Hamlet left the nursery behind and were sent to what schools their Fathers deemed fitting. It felt as if Ophelia's right and left arms had been severed, or her heart had been torn out, or no as she'd been crushed beneath a great weight and left beneath the castle alone. 

Ophelia was straightened into corsets that constricted her breath. She could no longer run with the stiffened horsehair belling out under her round skirts. Her new maid, Anne, her Father's spy for her virtue, smiled kindly as she tightened the laces squeezing Ophelia in. "You've had more years of running than most of us do."

When Ophelia was fourteen, Father began to present potential matches for her to Queen Gertrude, who'd always wave them away. "We can do better than that for our Ophelia." 

She was often "Our Ophelia," to the Queen. But Ophelia felt the curiousness of her position. Father had no lands of his own, labouring always yoked with Prince Claudius for the smooth running of the kingdom. She had no dowry, but her youth and the favour of the Queen. 

So she was still unmarried at court at sixteen, when Prince Hamlet returned from schooling. 

As he proudly told his Mother, "I'm to accompany the King, my Father, when he goes to campaign against the Swedes come the first of May, before I go to university in Wittenburg in September." 

From her place sitting next to the Queen, Ophelia blushed to see old friend's bright red hair grown dark as a burning ember, and his serious face grown lean with manhood. She glanced at the dark blue of his eyes and thought they seemed darker than they had in yesteryear when they'd played.

She blushed and in her embarrassment chided him, "Off to war, sweet prince, will you leave more alive than two." Then blushed again to have used her old name for him.

He stared at her strangely and left the room quite abruptly. Ophelia looked to Queen Gertrude, who laughed. "He came looking to impress his old friend with his new grown manhood, and found the beautiful young woman you now are." Queen Gertrude kissed Ophelia's cheek to her bewilderment.

Even more bewildering was a few days later when her Father tore himself from his duties to sit her down in her room. He said, "The King asked me to speak with you, but as you are so much in the Queen's company, I thought to myself that he requested without need, but then I thought to my duty, and how a word not spoken is a word not heard, and will speak with you now." He stroked his grey beard, and by long experience, Ophelia did not try to get him to his point. "I am to tell you what is readily apparent. Prince Hamlet's affections and his hand are not his but Denmark's to give. He'll not be spent so cheaply as on the daughter of a paid servant of the court, even one who serves it as ably as I. Always remember, a day's labour is a day's labour done." He stroked his grey beard and nodded to himself. 

Still Ophelia nodded hardly knowing what she was nodding to. 

That night, Ophelia found her gaze often on Prince Hamlet all through the feast of the night, but it was as if birds were alive in her belly and her corset synched twice again as tight, for she could hardly breathe much less eat.

Prince Hamlet felt it too, she knew it. She thought she knew it. She hoped he felt it.

For though the King, his Father, chided him for being too withdrawn and to lift the bottom of his cup a time or two, Prince Hamlet remained quiet and drank naught but watered ale. The King blamed the Queen with a twinkle in his eye for reading him too many books as a child, but Ophelia felt her heart batter itself against the cage of her clothes in her hope that the Prince gazed also in her direction.

She hoped. It was wrong to hope, but Ophelia had always been foolish over her heart. 

When Prince Hamlet visited Queen Gertrude while Ophelia attended her as her companion, she'd listened to him talk about his studies and felt her heart swell at seeing how sweet Prince Hamlet and Queen Gertrude were together. The Queen had missed her son, and obtained his promise to spend at least an hour each morning with her before he left on campaign come the first of May. 

As for the Prince, his face might glow in anticipation of the King, his Father, but he doted on his Mother as much as she doted on him. 

Ophelia exchanged some dozen or thousand words with him in deep conversation on all that had passed since they had parted, and all his hopes and dreams of the coming summer and how he'd impress the King, his Father.

So they passed the month of April. 

Her Father came to the Queen, on St. George's day, a week before when the King was due to depart. Father had a new husband to propose for Ophelia's hand and wanted to ask Queen Gertrude's opinion.

He lingered long on the virtues and downfalls of the match, as he always did. In this case, a merchant prince of the Hanseatic League, whose wife had but lately died and required a young wife for his children. Prince Hamlet left the room half way through, quickly scraping his chair across the floor in his haste to go.

Ophelia sat very still. Her hand was her Father's to depose of, but how she longed to dispose herself. She sent thanks to God that Queen Gertrude laughed and replied. "We can do better for our Ophelia than an old man in his dotage." 

The next morning, Ophelia woke in her tiny room to find a slip of paper had been pressed beneath the door and lay sealed with wax as if with blood. She opened it with trembling fingers. She praised heaven that it was well before dawn and Anne had not yet come into the room to help her into her clothes for her blushes were wild and easy to see as she read the poem that lay inside. The letter implored Ophelia to love no other and in proof of this promise kiss the place marked upon the page that their lips might meet with the page as a blessed intermediary. He'd signed it. She blushed at the way he'd signed it.

Prince Hamlet had signed it, "Ever your sweet Prince, but far less sweet than you." 

She kissed it. She kissed it a hundred times, blushing to do so. Then hid the letter deep in her marriage chest below the linens. Ophelia opened the window to put cool snow on her cheeks. Then rushed to the chest to kiss the letter and its poem a hundred times more.

She could barely look at Prince Hamlet at the trencher table at breakfast. Not looking at him, heart pounding at her daring, Ophelia brushed her fingers to her lips and then pressed those fingers to the rough wooden table and darted him a glance.

He smiled at her. His face glowed as he pressed his own fingers to where hers had been. He said to his plate, "Had I a saw, I'd cut the table up so I could take that part as a holy relic. An angel has been here."

She could not stop the laugh that bubbled up. "I am no angel, as you well know. And if you hack up the table, where will our breakfast go?"

"No, you are right. Not an angel." He smiled as he buttered his bread. "A sweet nymph chiding chide her poor shepherd for daring to stand next to her." Prince Hamlet brushed the tip of his little finger against hers. "Would that I were a shepherd and you my nymph in the woods." 

Ophelia felt something wicked, a slick ache between her legs, at the thought of the cottage they'd share. While her trapped heart beat rapidly in the cage of her bodice. She looked away from him. To look at Prince Hamlet would give all her feelings away to the gossips in the room. She buttered her own bread. "But what would we live on in our woods?"

Prince Hamlet almost replied, when Father came to the table. Father's head was somewhat the worse for the evening before. She went to stand next to him, so he would not see her standing near Prince Hamlet.

Ophelia was awake the next morning when the next note came. She almost flung open the door, but on putting her hand to the door froze thinking what he'd think of her. She opened the letter and danced as she read the words written there. He asked for a token, some sign of her affections. He offered his whole heart to her and with it his love, if she'd but return but a fraction of it. He begged her to offer him proof that were a match for her hand to be proposed, she'd roundly reject it in his favour. As if her hand was at her disposal.

Her heart pounding, without stopping to think, she cut a short lock of her hair. Once the cut was made, she suddenly feared it would be missed. But once cut it could not be uncut. She bound the black length in a bit of red ribbon from her red bodice. She sealed it up in a linen handkerchief that she'd embroidered with her initials. She folded it next to her heart in her tightly laced bodice, and as she stood at the sideboard picking out some pickled herrings for breakfast, she pulled it out and placed it on the table next to Prince Hamlet's hand. She smiled at him and let her token go.

His smile made his face shine. He slid his hand over her token, and she did not have to wait until the next morning. By luncheon, he'd pressed into her hand a poem about a reliquary made to hold the most precious lock of love.

She urged herself caution. She urged herself to be reasonable. She felt light headed and asked Anne to loosen her stays for she could hardly breathe. Anne's jest that Ophelia should use the feather more liberally lest the court think her heavy with child was a splash of cold water. It was snow. It was ice.

It was nothing.

She next time she saw Prince Hamlet, he pulled a small locket from under his doublet. Then he pressed its twin into her own palm. She knew what it contained, but her heart beat double time as he pulled her into the alcove behind the great clock and tapestry in the Queen's Gallery.

She swallowed remembering that in all her years as a child running around, they'd never found anyone trysting there. 

Her Hamlet put the chain about Ophelia's neck and pressed a kiss to her cheek. She arched her neck and gained another kiss to that neck. Heart pounding, she slipped back into the corridor and hurried away from his direction. Ophelia had to be careful not to be seen near him outside of the Queen's company.

She hid the locket beneath her chemise, but her hand flew to it often.

Then came the first of May, and Hamlet was due to depart, but quite suddenly, and for reasons hardly explained, he was left behind. She whispered for him to meet with her in their old fortress, an old storage room that hadn't been used since the new one was built closer to the upper levels. It was never visited and had last had its dust swept up when they were still children playing innocent games. When they were safe from prying eyes, she took his hands in hers, as if they were still children. "My sweet prince, what happened?"

Prince Hamlet's dry eyed face was pale. "The King, my Father, thinks I'm unsuited for such matters, and asked me to concentrate on entertaining my Mother." The tone of his voice made her soft heart ache. She sought to sooth his ache with a kiss, a mere press of lips. This quickly progressed to deep explorations of each other's mouths. Slick slides of her tongue as her breasts struggled for breath at the cage of her bodice. The moaning ghost of the dead soldier, who haunted the tunnel by the cannons echoed her moans as Hamlet tugged at the ribbons of her bodice and let the air in. 

Ophelia gasped as Hamlet worshiped her breasts, kissing them tenderly for they lay above her heart. She knew this was against all good sense. She resolved to pull away and groaned louder at the graze of his teeth across a bud he'd sucked into a hard point. Groaned and squirmed at the wicked throb between her legs.

So far so quickly and that was only the beginning. 

With some fanfare, the King departed with his fleet for that summer's wars. 

In the weeks that followed the King's departure, Queen Gertrude often sent Ophelia on errands in the afternoon to fetch this fan or that book that she had forgotten in some further part of the castle. Often telling her that she should not return before the clock sounded the fourth hour, for the day was so fair. Sometimes that the Queen wanted to be alone to write the King a letter on his current campaign. Sometimes, she longed for a little solitude in her melancholy. The Queen always smiled widely as she said this. She seemed as eager to have Ophelia leave as Ophelia was to go. 

The best part of it was, her Father thought Ophelia was with the Queen and praised her each night for growing so close in the Queen's favour for he'd heard that she was often the Queen's sole companion, and often advised her on how best to read to the Queen or hold the Queen's embroidery floss and once, demonstrated how Ophelia should hold up the Queen's gown, should she need to relieve herself. 

He'd not have been so pleased to know the only skirts lifted were Ophelia's.

It did not start so. 

Ophelia was resolved that after that first meeting would not be so. 

She slipped away to meet Hamlet, just Hamlet, her sweet prince, her sweet heart, in the old storage room.

Hamlet pressed kisses to her lips and told her how he longed to wed her. He spoke about how they'd live in the forest, she the teasing nymph to his longing shepherd. 

When he whispered against her lips that he'd die without her kisses, she knew it was true, because she felt the same. 

They pulled blankets from the stores and made a nest on the floor. Hamlet kissed her heatedly. "It's not the woodland bower I long for, and yet it is for you are in it." She knew it was true for she felt the same and she lay down with him and tangled her legs with his. 

The rush of air into her lungs as he unlaced her was intoxicating. She felt dizzy with love.

The passing of the hours pained her more. She dreaded to hear the distant call of the hours with the changing of the guards that signalled that signalled the third hour's arrival and they must ready to leave. 

Her heart was only fed every morning as she lay sleepless wondering at what poem the morning would bring. Her virtue shredding further every day.

As she brushed her breasts against his chest in their bower, he blushed himself and said, "Please nymph, if I please you in country matters, would you in exchange touch that part of me that most longs to be touched by you."

She bit her lip and should have said no, but instead her heart pounding with her love, she whispered, "Please, sweet prince."

He pushed her skirts up to her waist and lay between her thighs parting her nether lips with his tongue, which had her squirming on tangled sheets and crying out his name. 

As it came her turn, Ophelia held his member in her hand and stroked its firmness, though if she'd fallen so far low, she may as well call a cock a cock. As she worked the skin back, his cock's head seemed like a bevelled spear with a choleric colour. Blushing further still, all unasked, Ophelia bent down and pressed a kiss there. She suckled upon that tip as if it were a sweet, though in truth it tasted of bitter salt. When he came within her mouth, it was a surprise. Leaving her little opportunity to do ought but swallow his bitter seed down.

Hamlet apologized profusely after saying, "I was overcome. Say you will forgive me. Say it. Please tell me that you won't accept another, because I am some rough satyr."

Her forgiveness Ophelia granted and demonstrated by that their clothes were rapidly discarded the better to slide flesh against flesh. Until the day came that she gasped as he moved his member between her tightly clasped thighs, teasing her nether lips into a sort of throbbing ache. Withholding but that last single intimacy from which all danger tempted and that all her heart longed take.

It wasn't that Hamlet implored, or wrote Ophelia poems on granting a flea a prick still denied him, or that she should gather rosebuds as time was flying, of how he'd speak to the King, his Father, and beg to be allowed to marry her. Not that he didn't write these things. He did. It was that the slick wickedness between her thighs ached for him. It was that she loved him with all the beating of her caged heart.

She told herself as Queen Gertrude set her on a new errand that the Queen favoured the match. That when Hamlet spoke to the King, his Father, they'd be wed.

It was why she listened when Hamlet's caresses grew heated and he said, "Please, love, know I'd marry you tomorrow if I could. Please, I've read that the three days before and three days after a woman's courses are when her body may be got with child, and all other times it is safe to couple. Please, tell me that you've heard this too, and better yet, that right now it is safe for us to express our love."

She blushed as she counted the days to her next monthly, for she had heard that too. She swallowed and whispered, "It's been ten days and will be fourteen days further," and squirmed as he slid fingers between her nether lips. 

It almost surprised her that the gunpowder room down the hall did not explode with the heat of their caresses. The restless ache between her thighs, the wicked slickness had her squirming as he pressed above her. For a moment, one moment, she felt a shudder of dread as his cock with its spear shaped head pressed to her nether lips. She squeezed her legs briefly together on the weight of that shudder. He said, as if stricken, "You don't want to. You don't love me."

She took his face in her hands and peppered him with kisses. She said, "I love you to the bursting of my heart." As he fumbled, pressing down to no effect but to slickly glide between her nether lips, she guided him with her fingers to the lip of her maiden's entrance, and bit her lip at the pain as he pierced her and knew she'd thought right to compare his cock head to a spear.

He pierced through her maidenhead, and she was a maiden no more with a rough fumbled thrust.

His cock inside her felt as if he cleaved her apart. This was nothing like the pleasure that the restless wet ache inside her had promised. 

He stilled in his push and pull. "Are you well. Tell me that you are well, tell me that I haven't hurt you. Should I pull out? Do you hate me? Tell me that you do not hate me."

She comforted him. "I am well," and attempted to pretend at enjoyment. Though in truth, she more enjoyed how he held her when it was over, though her thighs were slick with seed that filled her with some terror. She comforted herself that she'd heard true, for it trickled out of her as she stood. She made a brave face and wiped herself as best she could.

He rested his sweat beaded forehead to her own. "I shall do better next time, I promise. Please tell me that there will be a next time." He kissed her lips. "Please, I love you so much that my heart is bursting with it. As soon as the time is right, I'll convince the King, my Father. I will. He will say yes. Our love is no treason. It's purest…"

She stopped his speech, and did not promise.

When she heard the calling of the hours, her feelings were a complicated mass of worms that twisted in her belly. He helped her back into her clothes and she stole away.

She felt as if her shame were blazoned on her face. She felt as if every eye knew her for a harlot. Every whisper that night at the roistering feast was about her. That all were sneering faces licked by candlelight. She gripped the edges of her plate and could hardly force down more than a crust of bread. 

Her Father whispered to her urgently not to disdain the largess of the King's table. He urged her to eat certain foods to throw off her melancholy humour.

Far down the table, Hamlet sat next to his Mother, and he seemed a remote echo of the sweet prince she'd held in her arms. She told herself it was merely the necessity of secrecy that kept him away.

That night, after Anne undressed her for what was the second time she'd been freed of her clothes, Ophelia stood almost lost in her room, until Anne chuckled and said, "Well, into bed, lamb. The night's not getting any younger, and I'm wanting my own bed." She slipped beneath the down of her coverlet and let tears leak into her pillow. 

Ophelia didn't think she'd fall asleep, but sometime after the Bleeding Nun, who the women of court sometimes heard haunting this area of the castle, made her three am walk, she must have. For she woke heavy eyed, and found she'd missed the delivery of some twenty sheets of foolscrap written in closely written words. Poems praising her perfection and damning his own lack of skill. Begging only that she give him another opportunity to prove himself no satyr to her nymph. To remember their love. 

She held the pages to her breast, the breast that he'd kissed the day before, and ached with love. Her thoughts of most of the night had been that she must somehow redeem the loss of her virtue with future improved behaviour. That she could not keep taking the Queen's kindness and returning it with soiled sheets.

When she saw him at the breakfast board pale and wide eyed, she did not whisper to him that the must cease as they were. Instead she'd pressed her hand to the lock of his hair over her heart and said nothing. 

When Queen Gertrude sent her to find a book that she was sure she'd forgotten in the garden, but not to return until at least the ringing of the bells for five, for the beauty of the day, Ophelia did not insist to remain. Instead she descended again into her stew of wickedness. Her nest of love. 

She did not stop Hamlet as he begged her forgiveness for his rough treatment of her. As he promised that he would do better for her love.

Their second time was better. The wicked slickness between her legs aiding his entry. What had felt as if he ripped her in half the day before was merely somewhat unpleasant easing into a pleasant fullness that rubbed as he pulled in and out of her, and groaning spent his release. When they were done, he begged for assurance that she loved him and that all was well. Promising that he'd do better. She heard in his tone an echo of how he spoke of the King, his Father, and her tender heart ached for him.

She still felt that same shame as she went to the night's feast, but no one pointed at her. No one turned against her. Her Father did not strike her across the face and fling her to the floor as a trumped up slattern. She'd seen that happen more than once to other Ladies. 

As to the third time, the third, the third, it was entirely different. Some wickedness within her had her shift her hips and Hamlet's spearing cock struck true at love's target. Ophelia had reason to thank the thick stone around them as she cried out loudly urging him faster and faster until he shoved her back on the floor with the force of his motion and the blankets beneath twisted with the slap of their bodies. This release he spent with an almost pained groan as her body developed a traitorous will, milking his cock that filled her of all its seed. She lingered in her Hamlet's arms thinking happily on how many safe days of coupling lay before her. 

When Ophelia was done, Hamlet stood behind her and kissed her neck gently, pulling her back so that her rounded cheeks brushed against the cock that had so recently pulsed within her. He drew his fingers through the still slick curls of her nether cheeks. "Better?" There was that same earnest note in his voice that she'd heard so many times after a visit by the King, his Father, that it tugged at her heart strings.

She turned to kiss him and said, "The best, my sweet prince."

They coupled each day during the remaining safe days, until the Sunday when it was doubly forbidden as both holy and the first of the dangerous days. When her courses flowed, Ophelia sighed a relief she'd not let herself express, and soon lost count of the times they coupled. 

For if love was a hunger, they did not restrain themselves at the feast. Hamlet urged Ophelia to not restrict them to an hour or two in the afternoon, but steal away whenever she could. Most days coupling two and three times daily for in Ophelia satisfaction only increasing the desire to be satisfied, and love only bred more love.

There was always the drumbeat unease after, but when her courses come again when they should on the feast day of John the Baptist, their course seem safe and good.

Sometimes she slipped away from the evening's feast when it was deepest in its cups to meet with Hamlet in the hidden alcove behind the Great Clock and tapestry in the Queen's Gallery. He held Ophelia before him whispering how hard it was to sit apart from her at the feast and not even look her way.

He lifted the heavy fabric of her skirts and needed no help in finding her slick entrance with his cockhead, thrusting into her from behind filling her further than he'd ever done before, even as he cupped her breasts out of the top of her bodice. She braced her arms against the wall and pressed back the better to drive him deeper. They froze in sudden terror as someone walked rapidly down the hall. That person paced back and forth, and would not leave.

After long seconds, Hamlet still deep inside her, he began to rock inside her a few bare set of steps from ruin. She bit her lips and shifted her hips to silently meet his motion with her own.

A second set of steps met the first and there was the sound of a kiss. Her straining ears thought she heard a man whisper, "Now that I know my feelings are returned so amply, I can hardly bear this seeming coldness," and a soft reply, "Not here."

Steps went out the hall parted in opposite directions, but this did not give Ophelia leave to cry out as Hamlet once more resumed his vigorous motion. As he came, her traitorous body squeezed every drop of his release deep into her body making her glad that they were at least a week away from danger.

Being so near to discovery did not stop Ophelia from letting Hamlet slip into her room in the early hours, where he pulled her into her wardrobe and impaled her sweetly on the spear of his cock with him seated beneath her, and had her bounce to her delight. He took advantage of this position to suckle at her breasts and he came with a groaned gasp deep within her. Even more dangerous, slipping into her room after Anne had undressed her, to undress and unmake her further still. 

After days of naught but feasting, there was each time a sort of pain as the safe days ended, but Ophelia could not be concerned. She was drunk on kisses. 

On the feast of Saint Mary the Magdalene, Ophelia's flows came, if very light. Nothing more than a day or two of spotting, that passed almost as it began and within three days it was safe to couple again. She revelled in a wondrous new tenderness to her breasts, which seemed sensitized by kisses such that even the touch of fabric brought a heavy throb of slickness to her nether lips. The buds of them darkened to dusky rose, which must be because of all suckling that Hamlet did there as he saw her increased enjoyment of it. 

Two weeks passed from her flows and Anne chuckled at the way Ophelia's breasts pressed almost to bursting out of a gown where once they had merely filled the bodice. Anne said, "My little lamb's still growing. It's good, we'll see if we don't catch a rich husband if you keep on in this way."

Ophelia thought little of it, or if she thought on it, her thoughts were on the pleasure of Hamlet's kisses on those breasts.

She did feel a twinge of queasy dread when the scent of the morning's breakfast filled her with actual queasiness. She reminded herself there was nothing to fear for she and Hamlet had only coupled on days when it was safe to do so. She thought more on that when that evening dinner set her belly to churning. She told herself it was nothing. That she felt the same queasiness at the scent of fish that were her favourite was nothing. She assured herself there was nothing to fear.

That night, Ophelia woke from a deep sleep in the dead of the night to hear someone walking the hallway outside of her room, and a woman's voice moaning, "All is lost. You have planted well and there is nothing left but rue or ruin. Better death than the fate that awaits." Ophelia told herself that it was some prankster. Some bawdy wit. But she did not open the door to see who walked there.

That the same moaning woman walked by the next night and the night after, Ophelia reassured herself, she had had her flows. It was just a prankster. 

It was with a sharp jolt of half-buried fears dug up like an unwanted bone, when a further seven days later, Anne tugged at the strings of her corset and jested that Ophelia should be sure to apply the feather more liberally lest the gossip spread she was full with child. 

Ophelia gasped at those tugs and not in pleasure as clothes that had fit snugly now felt too tight a skin. She tamped down her fears. She counted back the days. She'd bled. She had, but only lightly. But she'd bled and if she'd caught a child it was far too soon for it to show.

She tamped down her fears so tight that she burst out weeping at her afternoon's tryst. She begged Hamlet, "Go to your Father straight away. If we're wed within the month then all will be well, and we can claim our child comes early."

He begged in turn for time. "There's no reason to think you're with child. This voice outside your door could be just a prankster. You bled, you've said it. Twice now since we began. A queasy belly could be the result of bad herring, and my love," here he slid his hands across the flat of her belly, "you are no more thickened than when we began, except," and here he applied what he'd well practiced upon her bared breasts, "where its pleased you most. It is well known that a woman does not show until her fourth month. Please, before I must break this news to the King, my Father, let us determine its truth."

She wanted to argue that with her virtue already broken, waiting was the one thing she could not afford, but she loved him with all her soft heart. She allowed herself to be persuaded.

They forbore from coupling for the three days before her flux was to come, all the while tensely waiting. He jested it was time again to attempt some country matters and distracted her for an hour with his tongue between her thighs. The three days passed, and no blood came. Three days more and the lack of blood husbanded her cold terror to a winter's gale. 

She begged again, "Please, go to the King, your Father, and beg him to allow our wedding. We cannot wait. Every night for two weeks the Fallen Lady has paced outside my door warning me that safe days were anything but."

It was then that Hamlet whispered, "I asked the King, my Father, many times before we began." He could not meet her eyes, "Each time he said no. But," he kissed her hands, "I'll find a way. I will convince him. I just need time."

Ophelia buried her face in his chest as these words sank in. She said, "Please, you must tell him I am with child. With your child. He must allow the match." But she knew the King must do nothing, and the burden was all hers to bear.

She let herself be convinced. She had no other avenue. When ten days late, she bled in a redoubled flow, she wept with relief. 

As long as her blood flowed, she swore to the Virgin Mary herself that she'd behave virgin close once more and not couple with Hamlet until they were safely wed.

She could not face that fate again. She could not. She told him quite plainly, "Hamlet, I love you with all of my heart, but until you have your Father's blessing, we cannot continue as we've been."

Hamlet stared at her wild eyed. "You don't love me." He yanked off the locket containing the strand of her hair. "If you loved me, then you wouldn't turn against our love for mere suspicions."

She found herself crying, "And if you loved me, you'd not ask this." She removed her own locket more gently and offered it up. "Should I return this and your other tokens as well?"

Hamlet said, "No," and embraced her. They stood thus, and for once did not fall to further embraces. Ophelia knew her heart was foolish when she did not deny him kisses and strokes, and within the week, as he begged for a sign of her love, urged his release deep inside her. Still, she made rules. Only in their trysting spot, and not on Sundays, which she was certain was their mistake before. Also she added wiping her nether lips with vinegar when they were done, because she'd heard vinegar was helpful in preventing children. 

When the first of September tolled its first hour, they bid their farewells in necessary secret. Ophelia promised herself she'd not cry. They'd be nine months apart, and with no secure way to send messages. 

She burst into tears when he told her, "As I gain my majority this next summer, I'll tell Father to publish our bans or content himself with a brother for an heir. I promise on my heart, I will do it. Please promise me that while I'm gone, you will resist all attempts to make you wed another." 

She looked into his eyes and swore to remain true. Though, she'd no idea how she'd do it if the Queen ever agreed with one of her Father's proposed husbands.

They wept on each other. It did not change that he left.

It also did not change the way she wept with relief when her monthlies came neither light nor heavy. 

As she lay in the darkness of her bed, she reflected that she'd had a great deal of weeping from her love. Still, she fell asleep clasping the locket of her Hamlet's hair.

The castle was all melancholy on her sweet prince's departure. The birds seemed not to sing and the colours were dull. She nursed her broken heart, and hated herself for wondering if Hamlet would deliver on his promise the next summer. Ophelia could not even give reason for her changed mood. As far as the castle knew, she'd been at most in the Prince's company while sharing one end of a long table from each other during the raucous rouse of the feast or in his Mother's company.

The Queen was also in a strange mood though hers at least could be explained by her son's absence.

Queen Gertrude was often startled to laughter or tears, and seemed wan from sleepless nights. They made for a teary pair. Come late September, the Queen ceased to send Ophelia on her way about the castle to skylark as she would. A blessing as it only served to remind Ophelia of Hamlet's absence. Queen Gertrude confided that she missed Hamlet, and of course she missed the King, absent since the first of May, not due to return to court for till October's end. She laughed as she said that. "I miss him truly."

Ophelia allowed herself to be embraced by Queen Gertrude and much petted, and then just as quickly pushed aside as the Queen turned a sort of queasy green and loudly complained of ill cooked meat in the last night's meal, though she'd had little more than bread.

When Prince Claudius, who had often walked with the Queen in her Gallery, came to see her there, the Queen burst out weeping and told him in no uncertain terms to leave her be. Then all in a rush she begged that Ophelia run after him and bring him back. 

That Prince Claudius came back with her did not surprise Ophelia. For there had often been a sweetness in his expression when he'd gazed upon the Queen. His expression now was less sweet and more a thunder storm as he returned. Queen Gertrude spoke softly with him. Ophelia withdrew to the far end of the Gallery and examined the hangings there. Blushing as she remembered what she'd done behind those hangings and longed for her Hamlet anew. She glanced from time to time at the Queen and Prince Claudius. His blond head bent close to her darker one as they engaged in a discussion of some emotion. 

Ophelia later thought that she'd been far too slow when the Queen begged her for a favour. She asked her to go into the town to purchase rue, but not to ask the reason why.

There could be only one reason for such a purchase, and even as Ophelia said, "I will do it," her thought was Hamlet must never know. This would break his heart.

She went down the twisty streets until she came to a mean apothecary shop that sold herbs of various kinds. As she asked the apothecary with greasy black hair for rue, and he gave her a twisted smile. She wanted to protest that it was not for her, but her honour was only whole because none knew of the break in it. The apothecary said, "Now be careful with this here. Too little and what you want to be rid of will live, and you'll be in nothing but hurt. Too much and you'll die wishing you'd die faster. Not a pretty way to go for such a pretty girl."

She'd nodded curtly and handed him the coins, and took the vial back to Queen Gertrude, who gazed upon it sighing heavily. "You cannot know how long I have wanted another child in my arms and to give it suck. But no, what I have done is treason. Queens have been beheaded or worse for less. But how can I do this. Maybe tomorrow." 

Then on the morrow, she'd say the same, even as Ophelia took over the duties of the Queen's maids as the slight round of flesh upon her belly went from appearing to be fat from feasting to quite clearly the swell of something sinful growing. The Queen ordered German gowns with their high waists and put all tight bodices that would reveal her secret aside. Even as she grew ever more sleepless, as she admitted, "Each night the Fallen Lady moans outside my chambers, and yet I cannot do what she urges though I must, or both the child and I will die." 

For the Queen, she'd act always tomorrow.

Until tomorrows ended and the King's ship sailed into the harbour. 

Queen Gertrude welcomed him sweetly, Ophelia had no idea how she did it, and that night at the feast for his return sat wan cheeked at his side.

Upon his other hand, Prince Claudius sat with an expression made of blackened clouds as he gripped his cup.

Queen Gertrude reckoned Ophelia to her rooms half way through the revels, saying, "It must be tonight."

Ophelia looked back at the door. "But the King?"

Queen Gertrude's expression was weary. "Oh, he'll not stop his revelry to come here at least until tomorrow and he'll bide awhile in his garden sleeping deeply from his cups until well into the afternoon. I must do it now, or else lose my nerve, as it is I've waited overlong."

They stared at the drought awhile, and Ophelia repeated the apothecary's warnings.

Queen Gertrude gave a bitter sort of laugh, "But how much is too much." In a rush she picked it up and drank the whole thing down. "There it's done. I'll be redeemed or die of it."

Ophelia helped her up the stairs into her curtained bed, and stayed through the rest of the night. The effects were quite rapid, as Queen Gertrude clutched at her belly gasping in pain. Then a look of terror as she leaned over the bed's side and vomited up all she had in her belly and for long moments they thought all was for naught. 

They need not have worried. They must instead contend with great pains tearing at the Queen's belly, followed by the loss of something so small to have caused so much trouble. 

Ophelia buried what there was in one of the orangery pots with a cross to hallow the ground. 

Come the morning, it seemed the Queen would live. Ophelia stood before the door and told the waiting maids, "Her Majesty's time has come especial strong this month. She'll stay in bed and let the curse of Eve have its way."

If they whispered about the timing of such a flow, at least it was that such coldness was the reason for an empty nursery, while the other mimed a tankard lifted high and waggled her little finger limply with a laugh.

They came again some hour later begging to see the Queen. 

"I've told you, she's taken to her bed," said Ophelia, but they had no time to speak as Ophelia's Father came into the outer chamber, his face as grave as she'd ever seen it. 

"Daughter, rouse the Queen, there's grave news. The gravest." He shook his head and his eyes were wet. "The King, sleeping in his garden, he is, he has taken a sudden attack of the liver, I always told him to eat more melons and lettuce to balance his choleric humour with melancholy, which is odd for if his son has too much humour it is melancholy, and he should eat more dried meat, but too late for that for now, he's died. The King that is, not the Prince. The Queen must be told. She'll be beside herself with grief, but there is some comfort in knowing we all die in the end."

Ophelia took her Father's hands in hers, if only to halt this speech. She said, "I will tell her."

"No need," the Queen stood wrapped tightly in a black robe. She closed her eyes once and listed like a mast of a ship snapped by heavy winds, but the gales were her tears. 

Ophelia's Father said, "See to the Queen, I am… needed in Council. The question of the succession must be discussed. I must… see to the Queen." Ophelia helped Queen Gertrude back into her room to fresh tears. The Queen wept and wept, and with a voice hoarse from weeping said, "I cannot tell you how all these years I've longed for another child. To fill my nursery with laughing voices. To know that I killed the first to grow, but one day before my delivery. I could have withdrawn to a nunnery. Or to my chambers in months of grief to conceal my shame. To have…" Queen Gertrude could not continue for her sobs. 

Tears fell further still, as Ophelia helped Queen Gertrude to see the King's body, while concealing the weakness of her condition. 

That upon arrival at the tomb, Queen Gertrude spent more tears was good. Not a man or woman in the court doubted the sincerity of her grief, if perhaps mistaking the reason for it. All but one. Prince Claudius stood by and helped his former sister up to comfort her in this time of trial. Leaving Ophelia standing by the crypt, contemplating bones and wondering what shades haunted it.

She was then quite bewildered to find Prince Hamlet standing stunned in the castle courtyard, for ships had only been sent forth that very morning to bring him word. His grief was a dull stone that glistened in his eyes. If she were stronger, or another person entirely, she'd not have taken him by the hand to their trysting place. 

She held him in her arms as he cried, her heart aching for him, and aching for the cold suspicions she had upon the timing of the King's death, for she'd read her Bible and knew the fate of Bathsheba's Uriah. A suspicion, she ached at, and yet, now the Queen was free. Now the greatest obstacle to marrying her Hamlet was gone, and yet for the King had died and Hamlet was grieved by it. Her soft heart twisted in her chest.

Hamlet whispered to her, "Please tell me I haven't lost you too by waiting. Please, tell me that you still love me. I can't bear to lose you in addition."

"I am not lost. I am right here." She kissed him and meant it. She felt in some way hallowed by his hands on her face and his sweet caresses that turned to their familiar passion. She did not protest as he pressed her back into their old blankets, merely opened her thighs and took her lover in. He was not gentle, nor would she have wanted him to be after such a long absence. Their release came in waves as wild as those in the straits itself as he spent life inside her, which her traitorous body squeezed from him in greedy time to the beating of her heart. When they were done, she drew him to rest his head onto her chest and asked, "How are you here so quickly?"

He blinked wet lashes against her bared breast and said, "I could not bear to be away from you another day longer. I resolved to go to Father and tell him. But, I came too late. I was too late. He can never approve it now. He'll never approve me."

She did not tell him that he was too late for nothing, because she was right there. Also, she had a bone deep certainty that the King would have spun her sweet Hamlet about like a weathercock had such a confrontation occurred, but it had not, so she forgave him for it. She said, "Sleep awhile sweet prince." She rocked in him her arms awhile to his rest.

~~~~~~~~~

For the next seven weeks, their love was the reed her Hamlet clung to in the face of the world's buffeting. 

Hamlet begged her to meet him in secret some two and three times daily, and asked her repeatedly not to leave him. She gave in gladly to his desperate sorrow for the sake of her love and her need to be loved. His tears that she kissed away in their old trysting place before gasping as he filled her as sweetly as ever he had. Now the difficulty was that their affair was without the cover of the Queen's own. Not that Ophelia could say this to Hamlet, but certainly it was much on Ophelia's mind as she stole away. 

Hamlet's melancholy sighs at the feast that she eased in the familiar way behind the tapestries to both their distracted pleasure. A distraction of a moment, because no sooner than Hamlet come in release and she set to washing with the vinegar, he fell back into his dark mood. Which did not stop him from stealing into her room some two and three hours later saying, "Please, Ophelia. I need you. I cannot bear to lose you too."

Where in the summer, she'd spent not a public moment with him, his all too public grief called her to his side. 

For Hamlet to learn that the Council had decided to set the crown upon his Uncle's head, as Hamlet's own was still untested. He ranted about his satyr uncle, but she heard what was left unsaid. Hamlet's heart bled that he'd been judged in his Father's shadow and been found wanting. Ophelia held him as he begged her and delighted in his momentary distraction. She could not leave him bleeding. Not with how she loved him.

He grew morose when King Claudius stood before his new assembled court and announced that in keeping with the customs of the ancient Israelites, he was taking to wife his brother's widow. 

Even after they drew away from the feast and Hamlet coupled with Ophelia roughly at her own gasped urging behind the tapestry in the Queen's Gallery, on their return he grew melancholy once more at the look of quiet joy upon the Queen's face as she and her new betrothed clasped fingers.

Each day, in their trysting place and after he'd rocked so sweetly inside her, Ophelia tried to tell him that the only obstacle to their marriage was now gone. But when she asked him go to his Mother and ask for her blessing, and through her get the King's, his face darkened. "Are even you turning away from me?" 

Forcing her to assure him three times again it was not so. Then prove it with further action pulled from the depths of her heart.

Now after the summer, when by the bruises on her body what she and Hamlet did was just the same, it was a shock to have her Father chide her for too publicly pursuing the prince. She wanted to laugh over it with Hamlet that day, but he hardly let her speak a word, consuming her mouth as soon as it opened and leaving her after with distracted sighs.

A still greater shock, when her fluxes came early. As they had that once in the summer, they were light and lasted but for a day. She told herself that she'd grown fearful before for no reason.

But three nights later, she heard what she knew was the Ghost of the Fallen Lady pacing the hallway outside of her room moaning, "All is lost. You are ruined!"

She waited tensely for Hamlet at their trysting place and this time pushed him away from his teary kiss. "The Fallen Lady haunts my door. Please, Hamlet. This time, we must act quickly. I may not be so fortunate as to lose the sign of my shame."

Wild eyed, he said, "We'll return to Wittenburg." She hardly cared where they fled to, as long as they married when they reached there. They made their plans to leave within the fortnight.

It was a cold water shock, when Hamlet allowed his Mother to convince him to stay. All the more so when she opened the door to her room and faced the Ghost of the Fallen Lady, who pointed her cold finger at Ophelia and moaned, "All is lost, you are ruined! There is nothing left for you but rue or ruin. Better death than the fate that awaits you." The Fallen Lady's fate was clear by the curve of her ghostly belly.

When she went to meet Hamlet, he came to her hinting of dire deeds, as if she hadn't had ghosts and portents of her own. He kissed her newly tender breasts, their buds once more turning to a dusky rose and spoke of murder, and to her shameful love, she let him. But after, she said, "I faced the Ghost of the Fallen Lady last night. Her meaning was clear. Please, let us leave this very night."

Bu they did not. The Ghost of the Fallen Lady haunted the corridor outside her bedchamber all the long hours, but in truth Ophelia already could not sleep. 

Then for Hamlet to burst into her bedchamber as she sat there sewing with Anne, half undressed as if he expected her to couple with him before her maid servant to somehow quiet the fever of his brain and holding some new letter.

She sent him away imploring, and with Anne as witness to what had happened was forced to confess to her Father at least some semblance of what had happened. She played the innocent, even as she counted days to when her next monthly should occur. Knowing already, that it would not come.

Ophelia told herself that she'd lost the first child. She might yet lose this one. That five days late was nothing. That though she was nauseous morning, noon and night she might escape this fate. That she was suddenly weary and once more her clothes grew tight upon her body, Hamlet might still come to his senses and go away with her.

Hamlet loved her. There was no reason they should not be wed. If he was haunted by his Father what of it in the face of present danger from her own Father.

Except that her sweet Hamlet jested to her Father, her Father, that she should not walk in sunlight lest she conceive as if that was a wit. As he were not well aware what was happening, except he seemed half mad and the other half cruel.

Her sweet Hamlet had never been cruel. She gathered up all his poems, intent on shocking some sense into him by giving them back. It was he who shocked her, by all but calling her a harlot, even knowing that if she was it had happened at his cajoling. She'd have spoken more openly, but the King and her Father were listening. She could only weep for her dear sweet prince.

Better weep for herself. Two weeks past when her monthly had been due and the Ghost of the Fallen Lady's nightly moaning. Ophelia looked down at the still flat stretch of her belly and feared when it must give her away.

Daily, she begged Hamlet at their trysts that they must take flight, but he insisted that they could not without the King, his Father's blessing, as if that could come short of Doomsday, but what other choice did she have, but put her faith on her love.

Finally, Twelfth Night came, and the castle had revelled long into the night and now stood silent as a grave. She crept from her rooms across the icy stones in robe and slippers. The Fallen Lady pointed and moaned as she passed, but Ophelia ignored her. She slipped into her Hamlet's room, and found him at listless pacing. She said it plainly. "I am with child. Your child. Please, I'm asking you again, tell me that you'll redeem my honour. That we will fly now this very night, and you'll wed me in Wittenburg."

Hamlet stared at her shaking his head, and made as if to embrace her, and though it pained her soft heart, she shoved him off. "No, more. If we wed now, tomorrow, it is still too late to protect all of my reputation, but at least its mended."

All Ophelia had of Hamlet was rambling about what debt he owed the King, his dead Father, and revenge, and how could his Mother have fallen to tangled sheets, and that he needed time, but when he'd done right by his Father, surely then they'd get his blessing. It was a cold dousing. She knew there'd be no help from him, who was the only help and her heart.

She retraced her steps, colder now by far than before, and could see but one way from her predicament. She went to the same shop as before and purchased rue. This time, she felt only stone, the stone growing in her belly as she handed over her coins.

Ophelia took a little, and the ever present nausea caused her to throw it back out. Again, she tried and she returned it back up. In desperation, she purchased a second batch and a third. All of it her traitorous body rejected, determined to cling to the shame growing inside her.

Although each night, the Fallen Lady now urged her to self-harm, which would bar her way to heaven. If only she could sleep and in her dreams find her sweet prince again, the one who'd save her, or better yet, had never come back to Elsinore. Her thoughts twisted round and round attempting to find some escape.

As Lent came too late, and Hamlet raved manic about the court, Anne tugged harder each day at her laces, laughing that she must apply the feather if she was to fit into her dresses. Ophelia thought wildly of German styles, but had no money for it, and that would not keep Anne from seeing the truth and passing word to her Father. 

Then came the morning, these twelve weeks since those last spots in her linens and the Fallen Lady began her haunting, when Anne tugged at her stays and stopped. She gapped carp mouthed at Ophelia and did not chide her about the feather. Ophelia opened her own mouth to lie or beg, but found that words would refused to come out. Anne pulled her into her arms. "Oh, my little lamb, who's hurt you?" Then answering her own question, "Prince Hamlet, of course." She kissed her cheek. "Soon enough, your Father will have to know. Better tell him first before it comes to him through gossip. One week that's all I can give you, and then it's my own position lost if I don't tell him."

Ophelia nodded and promised and said nothing for the next three days. 

Hamlet put on a dreadful play and sat at her feet in his madness jesting on what had once been private matters to her skin crawling horror. It was all she could do not to enact Lucretia's resumption of her honour then and there.

She knew that she must tell her Father; she must.

That on the day she'd resolved to do, that on that day her Hamlet, her sweet prince, killed her Father. Her rambling foolish, officious, Father. 

Ophelia had gone from a ruined Lady to a ruined nothing. She was an orphan without land. Without dowry. No money of her own. All she had was a lust born babe in her belly and her murderous love sent to England. No justice for her Father and none for her, nor love, and she a fool for love and charity, and wanting to forgive, but twisting like a hangman's rope on the way of it. Her sweet bumbling Father was for the grave.

In her great distraction, after weeks of haunted nights, she wandered the halls of the castle in naught but her shift as if she was the ghost, her shame plain for all to see and only growing as the month it took her brother, Laertes, to arrive only puffed her disgrace further. The horror of the eyes of court crawling over her was all that she had expected. She answered with bawdy hysterical songs. 

Easter came, but with it no salvation. So she greeted her brother with that in mind. Her Father for the grave and she for disgrace. He looked at her in dull eyed shock to see the swell of her belly, while she flailed to cast their minds to their poor dead Father, who at least never knew her shame. 

Queen Gertrude bundled her off as soon as she saw her. In the privacy of her room, she said, "My son is lost, but we can still find a way to save his child." 

That ripped oddly through Ophelia. That her sweet love was a cruel madman and her own body merely a vessel for some other shame, while the Queen was free now to grow ripe again. Ophelia boiled over. "Your present happiness comes at my cost. Your lover killed to save you, while mine kills the ones I love."

In the Queen's shock, she let go, and Ophelia felt as if she'd just burned the last support, she could possibly have. 

Ophelia tore away. In that moment, she thought of the maid with butter yellow hair, and all her peaceful floatings. She ran from the castle. Tearing at flowers. All the flowers that Hamlet had once written her that she should pluck or else die a maid, if only she'd resisted that advice.

She swam into the water, which though late April was still cold as winter, else she didn't know how she could have done it. It was only as she died and stood before her own too solid flesh, cast out of her body, that she saw the all too apparent swell beneath her shift as others must have done. It was then that she understood the ghosts, frozen in the moment of their death. Ever repeating what they had done. She understood for she was one.

She could not dare climb for the light of heaven, shining above her, which would cast her out. She feared the black pit that yawned rotten beneath the castle gates. She walked the weary way back to the castle. Past the bustle of servants and soldiers and courtiers whispering openly of her death, of her funeral, of the duel that would follow. She was there, a silent spectre as her Hamlet returned. She saw across the yard, old King Hamlet and she could only glare at him, glad that he was no more saved than she. Glad of it, then her soft heart flailing at itself for being so glad.

As Queen Gertrude died, as Laertes died, as Claudius died, as her Hamlet died, she could think of nothing so much as Holger the Dane. She went below the castle, lonely and cold as the grave, to the old trysting place, to the place they once played in to find it already haunted by her sweet prince.

If Hamlet was too full of regrets, and of things done too late or left undone, Ophelia could not bring herself to give a response. It was a weakness she supposed and one that she'd died of. 

She haunted the castle and let any who wished see her. Let them whisper of her shame. It was nothing less than she deserved. 

If Hamlet haunted her, certain in time he could convince her of his love, he certainly had good reason given her past behaviour. Even fresh in the grave, her soft heart already longed to forgive him. Although, in that he pursued his Father's approval for their wedding still, she had no reason for it. Though she could not quite remember what stood in the way of such a wedding, beyond the King's disapproval.

Then again, Ophelia had all the days there were. 

As they circled each other about the castle, Ophelia well knew that she had always been foolish for love and charity.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


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